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The distinction between external communication services and internal consulting services plays an important role in most public relations (PR) theories dealing with PR as an organisational function. In these theories, two perspectives are at the centre of discussion: either PR succeeds in changing the environment or the organisation has to adapt to it. This chapter suggests a descriptive approach. It analyses theoretically and empirically the question of how PR manages the difference between external communication and internal consulting. A theoretical framework based on systems theory is presented. Key aspects of the approach have been tested with a quantitative online survey among communication professionals in Germany.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between organizations and their PR firms during crisis situations. It contributes to the field by identifying the role of communication consultants in contemporary organizational crises, tasks they are entrusted by their clients, as well as providing their perspective on current crisis communication practice and its future development.

The research is based on 13 semi-structured in-depth interviews with two groups of senior staff in 11 Croatian PR agencies: CEOs, directors, managing partners and senior consultants, all in charge of their clients’ crisis communication projects.

The research results suggest that PR firms define crisis differently than their clients, who tend to consider every risk a crisis, which causes a significantly broadened scope of work for their PR firms. The findings also suggest crises to be periods when new PR firm–client relations are often established and caution PR firms to balance between openly expressing their opinion when unfavorable for their clients and providing the best advice possible to achieve a sustainable business model with the clients that they consult.

This research provides rare insight into crisis communication consulting practice, especially consultant–client relations during crises. Methodologically, it includes a representative group of senior communication practitioners acting as consultants and can provide the management of PR firms and scholars valuable insight into the current and future trends of the crisis communication field in Croatia.

Although the market for communication consultancies has been booming worldwide for many years now, there are still only a handful of theoretical concepts and empirical findings pertaining to communication consulting. This is the fundamental starting point for this paper, which sets out to answer the following research questions: What is the function of communication consulting? What are the differences between consultants' expectations of consulting and those of clients? How do consultants and clients deal with the contradiction between proximity and distance? What are the potential threats to the autonomy of consulting?

The paper combines a theoretical framework of communication consulting with a survey of German communication consultants and clients.

First, a theoretical framework is developed in which communication consulting is defined as follows: First, it opens up decision-related contingency and thus produces additional options for managing communicative relationships with internal and external target groups, before helping to close decision-related contingency. The results of the survey show that the expectations of clients and consultants for communication consulting are largely similar. In the closing dimension especially, most clients share the active role of self-conception of most consultants. On the other hand, in some opening activities, clients wish for more critical, independent and courageous consulting.

The scope of the empirical material is limited to communication consultants and clients in Germany and may therefore not be valid in other cultural contexts.

The paper closes a gap in both theory building and empirical research in communication consulting. The theory presented conceives of communication consulting as a hybrid of management consulting and process consulting and, in addition to the opening dimension, also takes the closing dimension of consulting into consideration for the first time. The study reveals a certain schizophrenia in clients: on the one hand, clients demand more critical consultants and thus call for more distance; on the other hand, clients prefer to be close to their consultants, particularly if they wish to work with them for the long-term.

The aim of this paper is to shed light on the procurement process of consulting services within the public sector and to benchmark the obtained results with practices in the private sector.

A two‐stage research design has been used. First, in‐depth personal interviews were conducted with six users of consulting services. The second stage involved a cross‐sectional survey of purchasers of a broad range of business advisory services. This included private as well as public purchasers.

It was found that the procurement process of consulting services in the public sector differs significantly from that of private companies. Further analyses indicate that purchasers from public and private organizations are equally satisfied with the results of consulting services.

The results of the study indicate that public sector organizations may need to develop new buying skills in market management, specification, competitive process, negotiation regulation and monitoring.

The paper suggests that a more high‐level management involvement is needed, recognizing the importance of the procurement function within the public sector and supporting highly trained staff in implementing strategic procurement initiatives.

The study provides unique insights on how consulting services are purchased in the public sector as well as in the private sector. Furthermore, the paper illustrates which purchase practices explain the satisfaction level of purchasers of consulting services.

Nested within institutional theory and the political economy perspective, this study aims to examine Chinese outward foreign direct investments (OFDI)-supporting organizations and fostering mechanisms for its SMEs in Europe’s largest economy, Germany.

The authors conduct a multiple-case study to present rich insights from elite interviews with representatives of Chinese and German governmental organizations, intermediary parties and specialized OFDI consultants. In addition, the authors analyze secondary data such as presentations, websites, brochures, social media and recent Chinese OFDI policies for SMEs. The findings are triangulated by interviewing business owners and senior executives of seven Chinese SMEs that have invested in Germany.

Cooperating with Germany’s federal government, China’s ministries implemented an effective OFDI support network in Germany, which connects and benefits both economies. This includes Chinese governmental organizations, privately-held national champions, German–Chinese business associations and linked intermediary parties. These organizations support SMEs through four main mechanisms: networking and information, mutually beneficial knowledge transfer between innovation partners, lobbying for potential cooperation and an objective picture of Chinese OFDI and facilitating investment services.

This study advances OFDI theory and contributes to the growing discussion on the internationalization of Chinese SMEs by shedding light on China’s OFDI support organizations and mechanisms in the German market. The study also offers practical contributions. Understanding better how governments can spur internationalization is vital, as it determines the effectiveness of policymaking and fosters international mutual understanding, cultural exchange and firm growth and innovation (Ahlstrom, 2010), and hence ultimately contributes positively to society. Moreover, knowing the specific OFDI support organizations and measures China is currently adopting can serve as a helpful orientation for Chinese entrepreneurs who plan to invest in Germany.

This study develops a new model for selecting public relations (PR) firms based on high‐tech industrial perceptions.

The proposed model comprises two parts. The first part employs the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) for criteria weighting. The second part applies the grey relational analysis (GRA) to rank alternatives and select the optimum PR firm in the high‐tech industry.

Analytical results indicate that high‐tech enterprises consider criteria in the following order of priority: media ability, campaign ability, strategic planning, service team, cost consciousness and relationship maintenance. Furthermore, this study uses the example of a renowned high‐tech communications manufacturer in Taiwan to demonstrate the effectiveness of the model in PR firm selection.

The proposed model helps high‐tech enterprises to effectively select PR firms, making it highly applicable in academia and commerce.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how public relations (PR) professionals develop co-narratives with legal counsel when formulating crisis communication strategies. Understanding how PR practitioners work with their legal counterparts may help lead to more advanced and effective PR practice in the area of crisis communication and management. The authors attempt to do so in this study through interviews conducted with PR practitioners in two Asian countries – South Korea and Singapore.

In total, 11 semi-structured interviews with PR consultants, 6 in Korea and 5 in Singapore were conducted between May and August 2016. Data analyses revealed key points of interest for PR practice.

First, PR consultants in both countries reported increased collaboration with legal counsel in times of crisis. Second, PR consultants report that legal professionals have begun to realize the significance of winning in the court of public opinion. However, the process by which PR–legal collaboration takes place to develop co-narratives followed extremely different patterns in the two countries.

This exploratory study is not exempt from limitations. The findings from this study may not be applicable to other countries. As data collection in both countries relied on snowball sampling techniques, the participants in the interviews may not be representative of PR consultants in South Korea and Singapore. E-mail interviews had limitations due to their lack of richness and details compared to other forms of interviews (i.e. face-to-face or Skype interviews). However, computer-mediated interviews including e-mail interviews can still create good level of understandings about the phenomenon in question.

This study was an attempt to understand PR–legal collaboration particularly in times of crisis and contribute to the development of Asia-centric models of PR practice. There has been little research that explores how legal and PR counsels actually collaborate to devise optional crisis communication strategies for their clients (or organizations) in the times of crisis. Given that crisis communicative strategies have been shown to affect publics’ perceptions of an organization’s credibility and trustworthiness, it is important to understand how PR work with legal practitioners to develop co-narratives for optimal crisis management, and understand how their different professional perspectives, practices, and approaches affect the collaboration.

The present study examined the status of globalization of the public relations (PR) agency industry and its environmental factors by analyzing 101 countries.

Data were constructed from content analysis and multiple archival sources. Cluster analysis and multiple regressions were used for data analysis.

The present study identified the four distinctive groups of countries in the number of global PR agencies per country. These groups are (1) globalized top countries, (2) globalized major countries, (3) globalizing countries and (4) peripheral countries. The study also found that the degree of globalization of the PR agency industry in a country was associated with its democracy, economic system (gross domestic product (GDP) and foreign direct investment inflow), legal system (rule of law), cultural system (power distance and long-term orientation) and media system (Internet penetration rate) factors.

The previous studies on the global PR agency industry was limited to investigating a few leading agencies, but this study analyzed 114 global PR agencies and their diffusion in 101 countries and explored the influence of each country's characteristics (i.e. political, economic, legal, cultural and media factors) identified as the global PR environment factors.

The purpose of this paper is to help enrich the body of knowledge of public relations by exploring the status of the practice in Kuwait. Using the generic principles of public relations, a well-known theoretical framework in the field, we study the three major types of organizations: government agencies, nonprofits and corporations.

The authors gathered data using a self-administered survey and qualitative interviews. In total, 250 questionnaires were distributed (both printed and electronic) to employees working in public relations departments in all sectors and received 66 completed responses for a response rate of 26%. In addition, the first author conducted nine elite interviews with a chief executive officer (CEO) of a non-profit organization, a CEO of public relations (PR) agency, four directors of PR department in the private sector and three directors of the PR department in governmental organizations.

The results indicate that the press-agentry and technical functions dominate PR practice in the country. However, there appears to be a slow momentum for more specialized PR practitioners, who can assist their organizations in coming up with strategies and thus help organizational effectiveness. PR in Kuwait continues to suffer reputationally including the assumption that someone with no relevant knowledge or experience can be employed and succeed.

To the authors knowledge, this is the to study the present some of the generic principles of PR in Kuwait. Therefore, this paper contributes to the PR in Kuwait body of knowledge and provides the generic principles of PR in a new cultural context to test its applicability.

This paper discusses a strategic approach to the measurement of public relations results — the Ketchum Effectiveness Yardstick concept — developed by the author as a planning tool that organisations can use to measure and evaluate the overall impact of their various communications programmes and activities.